82-year-old wins Wish of a Lifetime trip to NASCAR event

FORT WALTON BEACH — Kat Harward says she can’t remember when she started watching NASCAR racing. It seems like the 82-year-old has been a devout fan her entire life.

Despite all the years, the races still draw her in when she watches them on television each week.

“I watch it like I’ve never seen it before,” she said Tuesday while sitting on a couch in her room at Wellington Place assisted living.

On race days, the staff at the facility brings her dinner to her — “you can’t stop watching cause you’ll miss everything” — and other residents often hear her cheering and jeering depending how her favored driver is fairing.

When Harward, who is suffering from the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, was asked what one thing she’d always wanted to do, the answer was clear: see a NASCAR race in person.

On Friday, much to her surprise and returning disbelief, she will board a plane for the second time in her life for an all-expense paid trip to Charlotte, N.C., near where she grew up, to see the Bank of America 500.

The trip is being provided by Wish of a Lifetime and Brookdale Senior Living. The staff at Wellington Place, where she has lived for about two years, secretly nominated her for the award.

“We’ve known for months, but every time I have to tell her, ‘Yes Mom, this is real and we’re going,’ ” said her daughter Teri Morgan who is traveling with her. “Some of that is the Alzheimer’s, but also she just couldn’t believe it.”

Sandra Rouse, executive director at Wellington Place, said a lot of people are nominated from more than 600 facilities across the country, but not many get selected.

“We’re as excited as she is,” Rouse said.

They have planned a send-off party for Harward on Thursday. The community has pitched in, too, with donations of everything from a haircut to a NASCAR jacket.

Harward’s driver of choice is Dale Earnhardt Jr., No. 88. But Morgan said her mother’s favorites really number in the tens, and she follows their personal lives as well as their racing careers.

For the inexperienced NASCAR observer, it may be confusing the first time, Harward said.

“But then you get acquainted with it and you have favorites,” she said. “And you have people you don’t want to win.”

She said she’d always followed Earnhardt Sr. After he died she heard that he had been buying seeds for struggling farmers in a community near where she grew up. She’s been devoted ever since.

In Concord, near Charlotte, where she raised her daughter and owned three drive-in movie theaters, there was a dirt track almost in her backyard, she said. For a hobby, her husband opened a little car repair shop — the only one in town — and the drivers would come to him for help with engine repairs.

As Harward talked about how she first got into racing, Morgan reminded her that this weekend she has seats in the front row of the pit and will be able to go “backstage” with the drivers. She might even get the chance to meet Earnhardt Jr.

“Oh my gosh, wouldn’t that be cool,” she said. “I might just hug his neck. He don’t know what’s coming.”